My First Year Teaching

Linda York, Member, PR Committee

After having graduated from Education 1A in June of 1967 and having got married the same month, I was ready for adventure. My husband (also a first year teacher) and I signed on with Indian Affairs to teach in Shamattawa in Northern Manitoba. We flew out of Thompson on a four-seater Cessna and flew over nothing but rocks and trees for two hours and landed on the Echoing River below the school and teacherage. Most of the citizens were there to greet us, very stoically. We discovered that our bags had been left on the dock in Thompson and the next flight in wouldn’t be for several days. My Grades 1 & 2 classroom was in a separate building with a wood stove and no electricity. I had about twenty children who were very shy at first, so I was totally shocked when they all jumped up and ran out the door and down to the river. Our luggage had arrived, and I realized what a big event an incoming plane was for them. On my twentieth birthday in November, a wonderful little man named Pete arrived and installed a generator in our house. We still used a cook stove but now had lights and a refrigerator. WOW! What a celebration we had with the Anglican minister, two Hudson Bay guys, Russ our third teacher, our Lamb Airways pilot, and our hero Pete.

My students were eager to learn and try new things. We used a multi-cultural reading series and I had to explain about windshield wipers on the car that two Chinese children rode in on their first day of school. Indian Affairs idea of an appropriate reading series.

We flew home for Christmas and to The Pas for a teachers' convention. Of course, we arrived late so our room was taken, and we were given one without a bathroom. I told our superintendent that I wouldn’t go back to Shamattawa without having a bath, so he took us home with him and I had a great soak.

I look back on that year nostalgically but that June I was pretty excited that this adventure was over.

The Public Relations Committee is still encouraging RTAM members to send stories of interest to be published in KIT. n

A Post-Retirement . . . continued from previous page

ideas that our way is superior to others. I did not feel superior but different and I learned each day just how much I did not know about one of the world's most powerful economic systems.

In closing, I want to state that I had never met a more generous, hospitable culture. We did not openly admire any person's belonging because they would frequently insist that we have it.

Because of our responsibilities regarding the education of our younger son, we had to return to Canada. What the future holds remains to be seen as one of our colleagues from Canada was 72 years old and readily accepted to teach spoken English. n